Skirt
by LesMisLoony
Summary: Epparnasse. Or is it? A rather different view of Montparnasse...


A/N- Well, Jehannish asked for another Epparnasse oneshot, and this was the only bunny I could find. He was a pretty small little guy, but I fed him a crust of bread and this is what happened… Just to let you know, though, it really is the only Epparnasse thing in my head at all, so it may be the last of it I'm able to write for a bit. I'll still write Monty, of course, but he'll be paired with, um, everyone else. For a while. For fear of redundancy.

That said… here we go. Skirt.

* * *

"Hey, you! Éponine!"

She took a deep breath (which made her stomach growl) and paused for a moment before she faced him.

Ugh. Montparnasse. One of the men her father was always trying to impress. No more than a boy, really, but he was part of that stupid street gang, whatever they were called, and her father's life ambition was suddenly to become a dirty crook, so these were his idols.

Damn him. Or them. Her father, that gang, all of them. She hated them. It hadn't been so long ago when she had had pretty dresses and a warm bed. She knew the inn had failed for a reason, but somehow she'd never really understood what that reason was.

Eh. It was in the past, wasn't it? And now she should really only be concerning herself with surviving. Making money. Finding another warm bed.

And, glancing at Montparnasse's clothes, she assumed he had one. He dressed like a boulevard dandy, anyway, so it made sense that anyone with such nice clothes—_fiques_, as those bastards called them, or _frusques_—certainly set aside a few sous for more private comforts.

Anyway, monster that he was, he probably chased anything that wore a skirt, and goodness knows anything in a skirt would rather lie on a nice bed than on a floor or against a brick wall.

Éponine glanced down at her own skirt.

Wasn't much. The rough fabric was torn in several places and stained in others. She could see her own knee poking out through a hole. Only rich people could afford shame, anyway.

Montparnasse had been eyeing her for some time, though. Strange taste, he had. Whores tried to look pretty sometimes, painting their lips and uncovering their shoulders. They had real dresses, too; not just oversized chemises and a hideous rag of a skirt. But whores weren't free.

Éponine scowled down at her boots, shining wet in the grey snow. They leaked, she thought idly.

Well, neither was she free. Damn it, she had at least a little bit of self-respect, didn't she? She was ugly and poor, but she was a person, wasn't she?

Wasn't she?

No, she wasn't free. If he wanted her, he'd give her a meal. A meal and a bed, even if he was in it too. A bath might have been asking too much, but she decided she'd make an effort to have one included.

She turned to face him with a smile.

"Monsieur Montparnasse, is it?"

"Hey, yeah. Will you come along with me?"

"_D__é__carrer_ with you?" she repeated, blinking innocently at him. "I am keeping watch _icigo_, monsieur. Surely you wouldn't leave your comrades alone? What if they were _emballé_?"

"Look, stop that," he said irritably. "I just want to ask you a favour, understand?" He glanced at his thin friend, Babet, and motioned for him to go on. The other man chuckled darkly and winked at Éponine before continuing into the tenement. "Look," he repeated when they were alone, "I want you to come with me."

Éponine shrugged. "What for, monsieur? I don't want to leave my father without a watch."

"I just have a question to ask you."

"Then ask it." She knew she was annoying him. Good. She knew he didn't like _argot_ and that he didn't care whether or not his friends were in jail. Still, she didn't want him to give up on her, though, and when he sighed and started to turn away she saw her chance at a comfortable night—at least partly comfortable—disappearing with him. Éponine seized his wrist. "I'll come," she said quickly.

His lips twisted into an ironic smile. "And leave your father without a watch?" he muttered, but he had already grasped her upper arm in his hand and was leading her through a narrow alley.

His room was only slightly worse than she'd imagined it. He didn't have an enormous four-poster bed, but his mattress wasn't leaking straw from the corners like her own. She nudged it with the toe of her boot and then looked up at him in alarm. "Is this feathers?"

"Yeah," he said dismissively. He removed his jacket and tossed it onto the mattress, opening his wardrobe.

Éponine perched nervously on the edge of the mattress, feeling her bony bottom sink luxuriously into it, and watched him patiently.

He turned away from the wardrobe with a different jacket in his hands.

"What do you think of it?"

Éponine wrinkled her nose. The garment in question was a dark shade of yellow, a boxy cut with wide fuchsia lapels. "It's a bit garish, f'you ask me."

He shrugged and put it away. "It's new. I got it off some student. Wouldn't quite match a red rose, though. I s'pose a white flower, a daisy of some kind, would do better. What d'you think?"

"Um, yeah. A daisy sounds good," Éponine answered. "Or a gillyflower or something."

"You mean a carnation?" he repeated absently, turning to face her. His expression suddenly dropped into a look frustration. "Hey! Get up from there!"

Éponine glanced about in confusion, but of course he was speaking to her. "What?"

"Get up! You're dirtying my sheets!"

She blinked and slowly rose to her feet. "I- I'm sorry."

Closing his eyes and exhaling slowly, he mumbled, "So am I. I shouldn't have been rude." Montparnasse closed his closet. "I'm sorry," he said again.

"How you gonna get me to, ah, _answer your question_ when you're so mean to me, eh?" Éponine asked with a smirk.

"Look," Montparnasse began. He produced a three-legged stool from the corner and placed it in front of Éponine, sitting on the mattress himself, facing her. Éponine dropped onto the stool and crossed her arms over her skinny thighs, sitting with her knees together and her feet turned inward. "Look," he said again, "it's just… a question."

"Uh-huh."

"About… your neighbour."

Éponine started up as though he had slapped her. "W-what d'you mean?"

Montparnasse did not meet her eye; he pressed his palms together for a moment and tapped his fingertips against his chin, staring intently at the floorboards near her boot.

"He's poor," Éponine said quickly. "You mean the boy with the dark curly hair?"

"The handsome one, yes," said Montparnasse, his eyes meeting hers. Éponine felt herself flushing under his level gaze.

"He's poor," she said again, "hardly a sou. I went into his room to deliver a letter one time, I did, and he has a mirror to be sure, but I looked and the only food was this old bit of bread in the corner, and I ate that myself. He hardly had any money at all, but he's very generous with what he does have, so I'm sure you can just ask him if you want and he'll give you money with no violence at all." She stopped to take a breath and watched Montparnasse worriedly before adding, "Why?"

The young thief seemed not to have heard a word. His dark eyes had again dropped to the uneven boards of the floor; he had not moved but for the slow rise and fall of his back as he breathed.

Éponine put out a hand and shoved gently at his shoulder. "What do you want with him?"

When he looked at her again, Éponine was surprised to note that his eyes held none of the malice she often saw there, but a sort of frank expression that she hesitated to translate into… longing. "What's his name?"

Caught off-guard, Éponine made a sound of surprise like "Buh-" before that lovely name burst out of her mouth: "Monsieur Marius."

"Are you friends, then?" asked Montparnasse, sitting forward hopefully.

Éponine blinked. "He called me 'tu,' but it was because he wanted me to find a young lady for him."

"Oh," said Montparnasse, his expression darkening again. "A young lady."

"Look, are we gonna do anything else?" Éponine demanded. She did not want to talk about the pretty young lady with the velvet bonnet anymore, never again. "Or can I get back home, or what?"

"Anything else?" Montparnasse repeated absently. He blinked several times and then started. "Oh." Looking from Éponine to his carefully-made bed, he said seriously, "You aren't touching my blankets without a bath."

"Gimme a tub of water, then."

Montparnasse shook his head. "Forget it."

"You don't even have a bit of food for me? I told you what you wanted to know!"

"You didn't really," he muttered. "But here." Montparnasse got to his feet and rummaged through his dresser, producing part of a loaf of bread and a bit of cheese. "This'll have to do." He thrust it into Éponine's outstretched hands.

"Thanks!" she mumbled, spraying bits of bread: the food was already in her mouth. She finished in a matter of moments and looked back up at him expectantly. Montparnasse was leaning against the wardrobe, his fine features were pinched into a look of melancholy. "Y'know," she offered, "we don't have to do it in your sheets. The wall and the floor are all the same to me, anyway." Her fumbling fingers found the few remaining buttons of her shirt, which she managed to undo.

Montparnasse crossed to her in a few long strides and jerked the sides of her shirt together. "If you want it so badly," he grumbled, "we might as well. But close that."

Éponine obeyed, watching him suspiciously.

"And turn around."

She complied again.

It was altogether a rather strange ordeal, she reflected later, but strangest of all was this: that night, both of them had cried out for Marius.


End file.
